[xsmommy]

my dad built our house, so we lived in the foundation while he worked on it. gramma's house in Verona had both a coal cellar and a root cellar.

[Willie Green]

Root cellars were usually a good spot for aging a batch of pickled eggs if there wasn't any room in the fridge. Also fruitcakes wrapped in cheesecloth and placed in a metal tin after soaking with rum/whiskey. (But it depends on how cool the root cellar got in winter. My gramma's was underneath the front porch with a door opening into the basement, so it got pretty cool out there without actually freezing. Couldn't do it in summer, it was just a bit too warm. But all her mason-jar canning was also kept downstairs on shelves, it stayed cool enough for that.)